


ex nihilo nihil fit

by naheka



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Caitlin Snow is Killer Frost, Caitlin-centric, F/M, Legends of Tomorrow Team are Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-03
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2019-07-06 08:24:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15882270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naheka/pseuds/naheka
Summary: Caitlin Snow to Killer Frost and back again.





	ex nihilo nihil fit

**Author's Note:**

> this has not been beta-ed and I'm sure it contains many errors and typos, which I apologize for. I'll correct them as I become aware of them.
> 
> *content warnings* there is brief, non-explicit suggestion of a sexual assault offscreen that is later confirmed to be false. Please be cautious if such content is triggering for you.

Cisco is following her again.

It’s annoying. Killer Frost finds it particularly annoying that he thinks she’s so stupid she doesn’t notice him ducking around corners and peering at her over the top of newspapers like it’s one of those stupid cheesy spy flicks he used to bring over when she--when--when Caitlin Snow was sick. 

She pauses at a newstand on the street to watch him in a parked car rearview mirror. He skids to a halt, looks around conspicuously, and tries to hunch behind a bus stop. It’s honestly pathetic. She snaps her fingers by her side and black ice forms under his feet, causing him to windmill frantically for a good five seconds before falling on his ass. 

Killer Frost smiles down at the tabloid, sends an icicle flying into a nearby car to make the alarm go off. Steals the magazine while everyone is distracted.

++

He breaches into her bedroom and she has him pinned to the wall by his jacket in about half a second. He yelps, flailing around and trying to pull the icicles out of his jacket, but they slip against his gloves and when she sends another singing through the air to thump into the wall just between his legs and a hair away from the crotch of his pants he just gulps and goes still. “We need you,” he blurts.

Killer Frost sighs. She’s in pajamas and her make-up isn’t on yet and she’s very tired of seeing him around corners at the grocery store, the dry cleaners, trying and failing spectacularly at blending in at the bar. “I thought you got him out of the Speed Force.”

“We did, it’s just---could you maybe--” Cisco is blushing. It’s hard to see with his coloring, but it’s there. Killer Frost leans in a little closer, curious. She doesn’t think she’s seen him blush before. “You’ve got ice very close to a piece of my anatomy that doesn’t love the cold, if you know what I mean.”

She reaches between his legs and he goes scarlet with a squeak, but she just pulls the icicle out of the wall with a sigh and tosses it aside. “What do you need me for?”

“There’s a meta,” Cisco starts, and Killer Frost snorts.

“You all managed just fine without me so far. You’ll figure it out.” She snags the open bottle of whiskey off the bedside table and takes a drink. A long drink. She pauses to take a small breath and starts another drink.

The bottle vibes out of her hand, smashing against the floor. She snarls, turning with icy daggers in both hands, to see his glasses on and his hand outstretched. “That’s my friend’s liver you’re destroying.”

That’s it, Killer Frost decides. It’s clear trying to ignore him isn’t working. Time for drastic action. She moves to do something violent but his hand snaps around her wrist, and he must have done something to the gloves of his gauntlet because when she flares defensively, her skin going absolute zero, he doesn’t seem to notice. 

And then she’s falling into a breach.

++

He tries to breach her into a cell and then breach away, but she’s too quick, twisting to claw her hands into his collar. He yelps, wiggling, his hands trapped between their bodies, and she can feel the molecules around them start to tremble as he prepares to vibe. 

So she bites him.

There’s not a lot of exposed skin, but her grip warps his collar, dragging it down, and she bites his throat hard enough to draw blood. She barely has time to breathe in his warmth--his _warmth_ , he’s always run warm-- before he vibes her across the cell. 

“Jesus,” he gasps, staggering back and his hand held up to keep her from lunging again. “Stay back, Jesus Christ, you _bit_ me.”

She flattens her tongue against the roof of her mouth, a single drop of his blood on the inside of her teeth. “Don’t pretend you didn’t have fun.”

He grimaces. “Ew. Ew ew ew, no thank you. Caitlin--”

She sends an ice dagger flying just past his temple, making him duck. “Don’t call me that!”

“Frost,” he tries to appease, but she’s pissed and she’s still in fucking pajamas and he’s never going to stop following her, pestering her, calling her dead name. He’s never going to let her go. Unless she makes him.

He must see it in her face, because when she stands with set shoulders and a flat line to her mouth he falls backwards into a breach.

 

“Oh Cisco,” she sighs, when they both fall out of the wormhole onto the floor of STAR Labs, him on his back and her straddling him. “You really should have gotten faster at closing those behind yourself.”

He tries to raise a hand and she slams his wrists on the ground, layering ice over and over them until he’s anchored with his hands facing away from her. Then she sighs, settling back onto her hees, perched atop his hips. “What did you think would happen? You’d come with that hangdog puppy face and ask me to come back and all the white would fall out of my hair?”

She can’t see his eyes but his lip honest to god trembles for half a second before he speaks. “I came to ask my friend to come home. Because I miss her. And I need her.”

“What about what I asked for?” She lifts her hips, very slightly, then rocks down. “What about what I need?”

“Don’t,” he says, and his voice breaks. 

She tilts her head at him, leaning over until her hair tickles his face. “Would you prefer it like this?” She inhales, slow and easy, and on her exhale her hair turns brown, her voice goes soft. The glow of her eyes fades away. 

He looks at her like she’s the sun. “Caitlin?”

“Cisco,” she murmurs, voice thick with manufactured tears. She takes his glasses off, revealing his eyes, big and wet and full of hurt. She lays her cheek against his. She wonders if he’d still cry for her if she kissed his heartbeat still. “Cisco, please help me.”

“Barry,” he says.

She pulls back, her hair white again in a snap, her voice two toned again, her eyes suddenly dry. “What?”

“Barry,” he repeats, “ _now_ \--”

The word isn’t even finished before there’s an orange flash and a blast of wind on her face. In between one blink and the next, she’s in the pipeline cell, and he’s not, standing with Cisco on the other side of the glass. He pulls the cowl off, his hair mussed and his face etched with regret. “Caitlin.”

She slams her palm against the reinforced, chemically treated glass. “Phasing all of us at once? You picked up some fancy new tricks in the Speed Force this time, didnt you?”

“I don’t want this,” Barry says, quiet and so earnest it honestly makes her want to peel him apart with her bare fingers while he screams. “You don’t belong in a cell.”

“Then let me out,” she snarls, and flares out, ice forming around her in jagged leaping shards, the glass frosting over before the treated glass melts it away. “I haven’t broken any laws, Flash.” Or at least nothing to catch his attention. “This wasn’t part of the deal.”

“This is to protect you,” he insists, and Frost throws two handfuls of ice at the door, fruitless except for how it takes the edge off her anger. “There’s a meta,” he starts and Frost rolls her eyes so hard it twinges.

“There’s always a meta.”

“This one sucks heat,” Cisco breaks in, holding up his tablet and turning it so she can see. “We figured out how to track him, but…”

“Barry’s warm,” Frost interrupts with a sigh. “And vulnerable to the cold.” And an idiot, she amends in her head. “And an idiot,” she adds. She tosses her hair. “All you had to do was open with an offer, and the kidnapping would be unnecessary.”

++

Patrol is fun. She likes walking around at night, the snap to the air and the cloudy skies. Likes that everyone’s breath comes out foggy instead of just hers. Likes it even more when she ducks around a corner into an alley, lays down some ice, and hears Barry yelp as he trips and faceplants.

“Stop following me,” she says, walking out to look down at him with a smirk.

He rights himself in less than a blink, then holds out a gloved hand. “I just came to give you this.”

She rolls her eyes.

“I was following you and also wanted to give you this,” he adjusts.

She takes the commpiece from his palm with a frown. “If you need me, you can speed over. Or you’ll already be within shouting distance, since you kidnapped me to help you but don’t trust me to make a few inquiries on your behalf without supervision.”

“Humor me,” he requests, and his voice is dry and self-deprecating enough that she acquiesies, tucking the commpiece into her ear. 

“That’s… snug.”

“Of course it is,” Cisco says directly into her ear. “You think a Cisco Ramon original is just gonna fall out of your ear? What do you think these are, gas station headphones? Who do you think I am? What kind of operation do you think--”

Killer Frost glares at Barry, who raises his hands appeasingly. “Let’s keep it to business,” he says to the both of them, and she rolls her eyes.

“I have three addresses. Split u--” she hasn’t even finished her sentence before Barry has disappeared in a bolt of orange lightning.

He reappears before the sparks have faded from the corners of her eyes. “Second one,” he says, and scoops her up. Next thing she knows they’re at the docks. Always at the fucking docks, she thinks with a sigh, and sends a zap of cold through his suit to make him yelp and put her down.

“It’s polite to ask a girl before taking her for a ride.” She lets her heat sense cast out. “Did Cisco confirm this is the place?”

“Of course Cisco did,” Cisco says, directly into her ear. “Cisco is the best. Cisco--”

Frost takes the comm out of her ear and crushes it under the heel of her boot. There’s a flash of blue in the corner of her eye, and Cisco pops out onto the dirty wooden planks. “--cannot be silence so easily,” he finishes triumphantly. He tosses Barry a small metal square. “Electric heating device, attaches to the emblem. It’ll burn out within a minute, so let’s keep it quick.”

“Neither of you are needed at all,” Frost interjects, her tone flat and bored. She makes a show of examining a fingernail. “Let me handle it.”

“We go in together,” Barry insists, and before he can start another family rah-rah she heads for the back door of the dilapidated warehouse, her boots scuffing on the ground. 

She stops before Barry can phase them through the rusted steel. “There’s… an empty spot.”

Barry frowns. “Empty?”

“Empty,” she repeats. “Not physically, just. Empty… heat? An absence.” 

“The meta’s been building something,” Cisco says. “We knew that.”

“Let me go in first,” Frost says, furrowing her brow a little with the effort of such a wide net. “There’s---twelve? I can work around them, disable the device.”

“I’m going with you,” Cisco says immediately. “Don’t even, you’re not headed in there alone. That thing took Barry down, I’m going with you.”

“I’ll do distraction,” Barry offers. “Around in front, not in the building. The device is the threat, the others are mundane goons.”

“Fine,” Frost snaps. She casts Cisco a cold look. “You better keep up.”

 

“You needed me for this?” Frost slings an icicle longer than her forearm, laughs at the bloodspray on the walls. “Not that I’m not having fun.”

“Yes,” Cisco grunts, elbow deep in the device. “I’m so glad murder gets tickles your heartstrings, but I’m really working with unstable, delicate materials over here, so--”

She slams up a shield between him and a man trying to sneak up on their backs, the bullets embedded in the ice. “Got any other concerns?”

“Nope,” Cisco says quickly, voice two octaves higher than usual. “You’re doing amazing, keep it up.”

Suddenly, lights start to blink. A high pitched whine screams through the air, making them both wince. “Is it supposed to be doing that?” Frost half-yells. “Make it stop!”

“I’m _trying_.”

Barry appears by the door. “Everyone’s been delivered to--watch out!”

The device explodes. Barry’s hand closes around her elbow and suddenly the world moves in slow motion. And she can see--she can see the flare of energy. Feel the cold of it, all the way down to her bones. Feel Barry go leaden and slow, see Cisco’s eyes going wide. There’s no way to get to him in time, not when the air is so cold breathing is sharp pain and not when Barry’s grip on her goes weak and shaky.

She reaches out, eyes closed. Wraps her power around it, cold singing to cold, ice calling to ice. She pulls it all away from Cisco and into herself. Into her chest through her nose and her mouth, her lungs and her skin. Wraps it around her heart to keep Cisco safe.

++

She wakes up in a hospital bed. Her brain is foggy, her thoughts hard to keep track of. The beeping of the monitors make her head throb. She tries to speak and only manages a low barely-there groan.

“Caitlin?”

Her eyes don’t open on the first try. She groans again.

A hand is holding hers; she’d know it anywhere and anytime. “Caitlin? Open your eyes.”

Feels like a marathon, but she manages it. There are dark circles under Cisco’s eyes. “Don’t,” she croaks.

“It’s okay,” he reassures her. “Everyone’s fine. Barry and Iris are handling a situation, but they’ll be back soon. Wally’s helping them out while I keep an eye on you.”

“Don’t call me Caitlin,” she rasps.

His eyes dim. He drops her hand and steps back, clearing his throat. “Water?”

She drains two plastic cups before she feels okay enough to ask questions. “How long have I been out?” She looks down at herself with a grimace. “Where are my clothes?”

“Almost five days. You didn’t have a pulse for the first two, but you weren’t--” his face twists. “--uh, decomposing. I think your powers put you in stasis while they repaired the damage.”

“What happened?”

“Literally no idea. I know I did something, accidentally set the device off. We should be dead.. were kind of hoping you could fill in the blanks.”

She’s silent for a while. “I don’t remember,” she lies poorly. “My powers must have just--reacted to it.”

Cisco stares at her. “Are you going to leave again?”

She tries to call ice to her fingers and almost passes out, a sharp drill of pain straight through her temple. “Not yet,” she admits grudgingly. “You mind if I keep crashing here? I did save you. Accidentally.”

Cisco beams. “Ramen on me,” he crows, and it makes her wince. “Sorry.” He nudges a button into her hand. “Morphine on me?”

++

She wanders, at night. Here and there and more about being able to leave the tiny apartment in the labs than actually having anywhere to go. It’s what she liked most about that shitty bar she schlepped at before Cisco popped into her shitty one bedroom apartment with the shitty shared floor bathroom and yanked her back to Shit-Central City. Dive bars in bad neighborhoods are full of people dedicated to doing nothing except minding their own fucking business. 

So she seeks them out again. Far away from where Barry and Iris have their own loft and Joe has his house in the suburbs. Far away from the house where Barry’s mother died. Apartment complexes crammed too close together with bars on the windows and double deadbolts on the doors and five times more liquor stores than grocerers. 

And if once in a while a guy follows her outside into the alley and tries to get familiar and she gets to give him frostbite in delicate areas--she’s just blowing off a little steam. No one’s said anything about it and she’s caught little flashes of orange out of the corners of her eyes more than once, so it’s not like they’re blind to it. 

No little flashes of blue, though. None of that little dip in her belly that means there’s a vibe fluttering past her. She pokes at that a few times in her head but can’t seem to come to a consensus on it. 

And then. It gets a little boring. The creeps learn to give her a wide berth and the bartenders give her nods and know what she prefers to drink, and it could make her scream, it’s so goddamn fucking dull as shit boring.

And she thinks maybe--maybe that’s why, when the guy with a scar across his eye respectfully asks if he can buy her a drink and ask her about the way she put someone’s face into the brick wall outside--that’s why she says yes instead of telling him to fuck off. 

He’s huge and not that smart but he doesn’t try to grope her, doesn’t say anything explicit or gross or patronizing. He seems a little bit like he’d like her to slap him across the face and tell him to get on his knees for her and when he offers her the extra ice in his glass she touches his wrist and asks him if he’s got his own place. Tells him to close his tab, and not ask her name or for her number. 

Minus points, she thinks later, for not cleaning his grubby kitchen counter off before bending her over it. Doesn’t matter, she forms a few layers of frost and lays her flushed cheek against its cooling surface, arching her spine and telling him she’s not going to break and she wants to feel it, get a hand on her hip and a hand in her hair and give it to her already. She laughs when he obliges, and then scrabbles at the counter, her giggle choking into a moan.

Ronnie had--not ungently, but not been careful. Not touched her like she was breakable. She’d never known sex could be giggles and inside jokes until Ronnie. She’d not know that sex could be healing and cathartic and mind clearing until Jay. And Jay had ended up--anyway. None of her serious relationships have ended well, but they were neither of them terrible in the bedroom department and she’d been so buttoned up, so carefully cold, by choice until Julian kissed her and then ripped her choices away with a yank on a silver chain.

She grits her teeth, forcibly opens her eyes to avoid being caught in old memories and an old life and all the dead people who littered it. And then she curses in a non-sexy way, because there’s a flash of orange and the weight against her back disappears with a forceful blast of wind, taking more than a few strands of her hair with it.

“Oh god,” Barry is already saying, as he zips back in and then spins around, both hands over his eyes in a way that would be comically overstated, if it wasn’t so annoyingly earnest in true Barry fashion.

“What the fuck,” she hisses, yanking her shirt back on and her pants up, slick down her thighs and flushed up her chest, sweat prickled on her hairline and her spine. “Are you--spying on me all the time?”

“No,” Barry yelps, his hands still clasped over his eyes, elbows akimbo. He trips over his own feet and flails, almost faceplanting before he rights himself.

“You can look,” she snaps, her shoulders drawn up tight. “And then explain yourself.”

Barry peeks at her between his fingers. “I--there was a vibe, we thought--”

“And what,” she says, her tone taut and waspish, “were the lot of you doing, vibing me on my nights off? Am I not allowed to--” she fights down a blush. “To---”

“Cait,” Barry says softly, his hands dropping to his sides. “You’re crying.”

“What?” She wipes at her eyes, then swallows at the smudged makeup on them, the remnants of tears. “I’m fine. It’s none of your business.”

Barry’s fingers twitch. “Can I--” he bites it back, takes a breath. Visibly changes what he was going to ask. “Can I get you a tissue?”

“Yeah,” Frost says quietly. “Okay.”

He zips away, back in the same second, clutching two boxes to his chest. “I didn’t know if you liked lotion on them.”

“I do.”

“Okay,” he says, and extends one of the boxes awkwardly towards her.

She takes a single tissue, dabs under her eyes. “Thanks, I guess.”

“I’m sorry,” he offers, fidgeting and clearly forcing himself to be still on his feet. “I thought…”

“It’s fine,” she says, cutting him off. “I don’t want to talk about it.” She blows her nose lightly. “You didn’t drop him in the river or anything, did you?”

“No,” is all Barry says, and she narrows her eyes. “Maybe,” he mumbles. “But near a ladder. He’s fine.”

“He wasn’t doing anything--nonconsensual.”

Under his mask, Barry is almost the color of his costume. “Right. Again, super sorry.”

“I don’t need you to save me. Not anymore.”

“You never did.”

Frost snorts. “Please. I was pathetic. Kidnapped by that villain, this villain, gorilla villain.”

“We saved each other,” Barry insists, his faith in who she used to be unshakable. It’s absolutely infuriating.

Frost refuses to look at him. “She was pathetic and she knew it.”

Barry appears in front of her in a flash, eyes firm and warm. “She saved me a hundred times over.”

Frost considers her reponses and selects one, calculated with scalpel precision, the glow of her eyes flaring. “She died and you weren’t there.”

She watches it hit him, the flicker of his eyelashes and the flinching clench of his jaw. He disappears, the wind hitting her face, knocking a magazine off a table on his way out. The ice, long melted, drips water onto the stained cracked tile. 

++

“I love your jacket,” Iris says, while they’re sprinting away from a demon frog that spits acid.

Frost cuts her a look.

“Sorry, I’m freaking out a little.” Iris yanks her behind a dumpster and Frost gives her a boost before pulling herself up and in, Iris’s grip tight on her wrists as she helps. They topple in with a wet splat and they crouch in the rot and the mush. “Wasn’t expecting… whatever that is.”

“It’s real leather,” Frost says, because her jacket and where she got it from is an easier subject than focusing on the fact that she thinks there’s rat chewing on her boot. 

“We should go shopping,” Iris says offhandedly, the menacing croaking getting closer. “You know, if we survive.”

Frost calls an icicle to each hand. The sides of the dumpster flare out in sharp jagged points. “Sure,” she mutters. “Whatever.” She shoves Iris behind her and gears up for a fight.

 

“Well now we have to go shopping,” Iris says, fifteen minutes later. 

A large goop of mucus is dripping down Frost’s cheek. Her jacket, on the asphalt in front of them, is smoking, a hole burned through the shoulder. She sighs.

 

“Paying,” Frost says scornfully. “You know we could just _take_ what we want.”

“This is cute,” Iris says with forced cheer, ignoring her comment entirely. She holds up something blousy, in pastels.

Frost glowers at the hovering boutique attendant until she squeaks and flees. “My head itches.”

Iris produces a beanie from her purse. “Try this one?”

“No.” Frost looks at the blouse and scoffs. She pulls the baseball cap down lower on her face.

“This is… fun,” Iris says. She plucks another hanger from a rack. “Hey, this is your color.”

It is her color, Frost thinks grudgingly. But... “It’s something _she’d_ wear,” she hisses. The attendant is now watching them anxiously from behind the counter; it’s a matter of a single thought and a drop of will to freeze the coffee in her expensive travel mug.

“Who?”

Frost glares harder. “No one.” She turns and pretends to look at the jackets.

“You mean Caitlin. It’s something Caitlin would have worn.”

Frost shrugs a shoulder. “She’s dead. It doesn't matter.”

Iris is quiet; the hangers clack against each other. Behind the cash register, the attendant turns her thermos upside down, puzzled. 

“I think…” Iris starts, and Frost sighs heavily. “No, hear me out. And then you can leave if you want, okay? But I think… that you’re scared of losing yourself in who you used to be. But you’re not really Killer Frost, not like she was on the other Earth. I met her, and you’re not her. You care, even if you think you don’t want to. So let’s find you some clothes that aren’t who you were before Savitar, and not who you were when you were with Savitar. Just you, and who you are now.”

Frost glowers at the ground. “I want leather.”

“Leather,” Iris says agreeably, turning towards the far wall. “Also, I have six apartment applications in my purse, so let’s keep moving. Busy day.”

++

“I don’t think this is necessary,” Barry whines, fidgeting as Iris surveys his latest outfit. “I’m sure there must be another way to find out if she’s the meta than dating her.”

“You’re a fine specimen of a man, Barry Allen.” Cisco removes his lollipop with a smack of his lips. “Bask in the attention it brings.”

Iris adjusts his bowtie. “Very dashing.”

Barry melts at her attention, his smile turned goofy. Then he remembers the plan and groans. “You just went shopping with Caitlin--”

Iris coughs pointedly.

“With Caitlin,” Barry corrects in a mutter. “I don’t see why girls--” He stops, Cisco jerking a hand across his throat urgently.

“Finish that sentence,” Iris says sweetly. “Barry Allen, finish that sentence.”

“S’good plan,” Barry mumbles. “Very smart.”

She pats his shoulder. “What do you think?” she asks Frost.

Frost surveys Barry, head to foot. He flinches when she steps close, but doesn't retreat backwards. She musses his hair, working the gel out until it’s flopping a little into his eyes. He yelps. “Not the coif!”

“No,” Iris interjects. “She’s right. It looks better.”

Cisco claps his hands together. “I love a fake date caper. Let’s get this on the road.”

 

Frost watches the police drag the screaming woman down the street towards the squad car, slipping and cursing as the ice on the sidewalk starts to thaw. “I’m from the seventh dimension!” the woman screams. “That ring is my _divine right_.”

Barry zips up to join Frost on the roof. He tosses a ring up in one hand, catches it before it can rain down on the street below. “Can I handle a caper or what?”

She rolls her eyes at him. “Yes, I found your screams every time she touched you very intimidating.”

In her ear, Cisco snickers. “Stoic, even.”

Below them, a howl floats up, cut off by the slam of a car door. “ _The Flash is a terrible kisser_.”

“I’m not a bad kisser,” Barry mutters. He nudges Frost with his elbow for backup. “You’ve kissed me.”

“I was trying to kill you.”

“Yeah, but. Not a wet fish, right?” He grins at her, camaraderie and the flush of victory.

“You’re not a bad kisser,” Frost agrees, buoyed to indulgency by a good fight and the right kind of ache in her muscles. “All three times were fun.”

“Yeah,” Barry says smugly. Then his head whips around. “Wait, what?”

++

“You’ve been good lately,” Cisco says, at her door. “That’s a Santa joke, not a creepy joke. I brought gifts?”

She doesn’t let him in. “How’d you know where I live?”

He shrugs. “No secrets among friends?” She doesn’t respond. “C’mon, I just want to talk. And I really did come bearing gifts.” He holds up a festively colored bag.

_Caitlin_ , the tag says.

“Keep it.”

“Caitlin--”

“Stop _calling_ me that.” Her voice goes harsh and flanging; her fists are clenched so hard it hurts. “Caitlin Snow is dead.”

His back goes stiff, his eyes hard. His fingers twitch and she can feel the air go static like it does before he start flinging vibes. “You aren’t. Not to me.”

“She died,” Frost presses, advancing out of the doorway of her apartment, Cisco giving ground even though he doesn’t look away from her face. “She _died_ and she’s _gone_ and nothing is _ever_ going to bring her back to you.”

“No,” he denies, and although his voice trembles it doesn’t crack. “It’s still you. I know you remember her. She’s not dead. _You’re_ not dead.”

She snarls, her vision shaky around the edges with the force of her rage. The hallway starts to go blurred, a flurry with a sharp arctic breeze kicking up. “I never said I don’t remember. I remember. Or is it that you’re afraid I do? Afraid that there are things I know that she never told you?”

He’s shaking. “Stop.”

She presses harder. “Do _you_ remember? When I came back from my little vacation with Jay? After the good Dr. Allen looked me over? Do you remember what you asked?”

_His careful hands tucking the blanket around her. A soft kiss against her hair. Wiping the tears away from under her eyes when she woke screaming. His halting hesitant trembling voice. Did he--did Jay--_

“Don’t,” Cisco says. A tear freezes on his cheek. A tear for her, always for her. For Caitlin.

“Caitlin Snow,” Frost sneers. “She loved you. But you keep saying you knew her better than anyone. Do you know if she’d lie? To make everyone okay? To make _you_ feel better?”

“Barry,” Cisco says, and she didn’t think she could get any angrier than she already was. He wants to have this conversation? He thinks he can come over to her new apartment and call her a dead girl’s name and she’ll melt into his arms and sneak guacamole off his plate and wear Ronnie’s ring again?

“Did you,” she snarls, “seriously think he took her just to talk?”

He shakes his head. “She would have told me,” he says, and just like that she’s already won.

Even so, she presses harder. She drops the blue from her eyes and the extra tone from her voice. Lets her hair go brown and the white fade from her lips. Her voice trembles; her eyes water. “Cisco,” she stammers, “Cisco, he--”

Barry grabs her by the elbow and the hip. When she blinks again they’re four blocks away, in an alley. She shoves him away from her and dusts herself off. “Are you going to take me on a time out every time Cisco gets a little teary?”

He looks at her disapprovingly. “You were being cruel.”

No, she wants to scream, she was responding in kind. Cisco was being cruel.

“Whatever,” she snaps, dragging her hands through her windswept locks. “Just leave me the fuck alone.”

“You can’t make us stop loving you,” Barry says, and he’s gone before she can spear him through the heart.

++

Frost remembers Caitlin as a child: she cried when the baby bird she nursed in a shoebox with an eyedropper died, she buried her hamster under her mother’s rose bushes with full honors, she used to pick worms off the sidewalk and put them back into the grass after it rained. She memorized the Hippocratic Oath before she learned to read, at her father’s knee. The leather chair in his study, her finger tracing underneath the words she doesn’t know how to read. Over and over until she could do it with her eyes closed.

And what he told her after, the most important. Even more important than the oath. _Primum non nocere_ , saying it easy and slow and careful while she stumbled around the unfamiliar sounds of the Latin.

_Do no harm_.

 

She drinks before bed now. On the fire escape, which is precarious to say the least and definitely not up to code. Straight from the bottle, because there’s no one around to see but the neighbors, and they’re more likely to toast her with their own plastic vodka than judge her for not using a glass. Her mother would _hate_ her apartment. Caitlin’s mother would hate her apartment.

Her life is so strange that it’s not even much of a surprise when a white rectangle appears in what could generously be described as her living room and Sara Lance steps out. “Killer Frost?”

Frost blinks. It’s the first time anyone who’s not trying to kill her has addressed her properly, instead of as Caitlin Snow. “Flash isn’t here.”

“I know. He sent me here.” Sara surveys the apartment. “I was ready to warn you about cramped bunks, singular washing machines, and sharing bathrooms with Nate and his hair products, but I don’t think you can actually get worse than this.”

Frost sighs. She offers Sara the vodka. “I don’t work for free.”

“Barry said maybe you need a break from Central City. And what do you know, I’ve got room for a badass on my ship that travels through space and time.” Sara arches an eyebrow. “Last week we egged Nixon.”

Frost forms an icicle, long and sharp and jagged. Their breath puffs out foggy as the temperature plummets. “Your policy on killing?”

Sara is silent for a long hanging moment. Her eyes are flat and hard. “Case by case.”

Frost writes Barry a note. Packs a bag.

++

Martin Stein raps at the door to Frost’s small room. “I come bearing gifts.”

“Dr. Stein,” Frost greets, but she doesn’t invite him inside. He offers her a small wrapped parcel, no tag. She hesitates. “I’m not Caitlin Snow. Not anymore.”

He smiles, fatherly enough it puts her back up and makes her stiff. “To honor her, then. A reminder of where you came from.” He softens his smile. “I’ll be in the lab if you’d like to lend a hand.”

“I’m not a doctor,” she snaps sharply, and he nods in recognition, acceptance.

“If you wish for some company, then.”

Frost closes the door behind him. She rips the paper away--it’s a photo. Caitlin and Ronnie on their wedding day. Flowers in her hair and a glowing smile, the matching rings on their fingers. She doesn’t know where that ring is, she realizes. Doesn’t know where Caitlin’s stuff went when Frost fled the city and left everything behind. 

She sits on the edge of her bed, the sheets still folded at the foot of it. She remembers Ronnie. Remembers their first date, their first kiss. How she refused to let anyone call her Cait until he came along. She remembers him just like she remembers medical school. Is she still a doctor, if she’s betrayed all her oaths? Still a widow if she thinks of Ronnie without feeling anything but cold?

She shuts the photo in a drawer and refuses to think of it again.

++

Frost flings three icicles, one after the other--hears a high pitched scream of pain as at least one of them hits home. 

“Very nice,” Mick growls from where he’s hunched beside her behind the tree. “You ever consider playing with fire instead?”

Frost smiles with all her teeth. “You ever consider what sensitive places I could form some ice in?”

Mick’s face goes constipated. “Low blow, sister.”

Sara vaults over a fallen log. “Jackson’s dead, the others are headed to the ship.”

Frost throws up a shield of ice in time to intercept an actual cannonball, which is something she never thought she’d have to do. “I thought we weren’t supposed to mess with the timeline.”

Sara makes a vague gesture with one hand. “Meh.” To their left, muskets fire, sending sprays of dirt and bark flying everywhere. Sara throws three knives; men scream. “Let’s talk time theory back on the _Waverider_ , okay?”

++

Frost asks Gideon to send her meals to her room; avoids everyone except when there’s heads to crack together. Gideon keeps loading her personal tablet with the latest issues from medical journals; Frost deletes four of them before she breaks and starts reading them. Iris sends her emails with updates and pictures, Barry asks when she’s coming back. 

Cisco is radio silent.

 

“Hey.” Sara stirs her from her thoughts. “Gonna join us for dinner later?”

Frost perks up. “We’re headed on a mission?”

“Yeah, kinda. It was Mick’s turn to cook. Could be dangerous in there.”

Frost shrugs. “I’ll eat later. Got some reading to do.”

Sara hesitates. “Okay. If you’re sure. There’ll be a place set for you, if you change your mind.”

Frost stands suddenly, as Sara turns to leave. “Why did you ask me here? You don’t need me.”

Sara does her the courtesy of taking the question seriously. “I… I know what it’s like, to have the fundamentals of your very self change because other people took your choice away. And to--to wake up not yourself.”

Frost is quiet for a long time, and Sara waits, steady and calm. “I think,” Frost says slowly and softly, “I will join you for dinner.”

 

The table goes quiet when she comes in, all eyes turned to her. “Hello,” Martin says, standing and pulling out a chair for her. “It’s very nice of you to join us.”

“So,” Jax says, cheerful and ignoring Sara’s elbow digging pointedly into his side. “What should we call you when we’re not, you know, fighting the good fight.”

Everyone’s gaze intensifies.

“My name,” Frost says, and feels the truth of it slip off her tongue as she says it, her hair turning brown as she fades away. “Is Caitlin Snow.”

++

Caitlin starts helping Martin out in the lab. She likes it, the quiet chime of Gideon passing on a message, the click of their instruments and the scratch Martin’s pen in his notebook--he’s old school all the way, except for the part where he lives on a timeship.

“I’m not a doctor,” she protests, when Gideon calls her Dr. Snow. “I’m not,” she says to Martin, who’s entering simulation data.

“And whyever not?”

Caitlin looks down at her gloved hands. “ _Primum non nocere_.”

“ _Ex nihilo nihil fit_ ,” he counters. “Nothing comes from nothing. You have to atone to atone.”

She flexes her fingers. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

He smiles. “You certainly are. Chess after dinner?”

 

She patches him up after a fight a few days later in the field; her hands don’t shake. It’s the neatest line of stitches she’s ever done, even if Gideon will just remove them as soon as they get back to the infirmary.

“I never had a son, you know,” Martin tells her, his face white with pain. Jax clutches his hand, cracking jokes to distract him from the pain. “What wonderful strange roads I’ve traveled, to now have two.”

 

Cisco sends her a single message. _I miss you_. She watches three episodes of a zombie show with Jax and misses him so sharply it hurts. Misses him eating her snacks and being her sounding board, bringing him coffee and falling asleep in his car as he drives her home. Misses the way he smells and the warmth of his hugs. 

 

She finds Sara sharpening an alarming number of swords. “How did you come to terms with it?”

Sara blinks. “What? Did Jax prank you? Did _Ray_? I warned him about shrinking personal items--”

“No, not that. What you told me. You know.”

“Oh.” Sara scootches over, pats the bench beside her. “Come help me with this.”

Caitlin picks up what appears to be a very smooth rock. “I… have no idea what to do.”

Sara swaps the stone out for a cloth. “Those white collar hands know how to polish silver?”

“Mother forbade me to speak to the help.”

Sara doubletakes, then smiles. “She jokes.”

Caitlin picks up one of the knives on the tabletop and smears polish up and down the gleaming blade. “I really did need a break from Central City.”

Sara nods, accepting and understanding. They work in silence for a while.

“The thing is,” Sara says, as Caitlin sets one knife aside and picks up another. “I was a party girl. I went to the gym to keep my ass toned and my belly flat but I never threw a real punch in my life. But I was angry. I think everyone is.” She shoots Caitlin a smile. “All women are. And the shit that we’ve gone through, of course we’ve got violent urges. The only difference now is that you and I have the ability to be violent. To do harm. I’m a violent person, Snow. But I can direct that violence, and I can surround myself with good people who’ll tell me if I’ve gone too far. Who’ll stop me.”

“Family,” Caitlin says with a sigh. 

“I had an okay family, you know? This one doesn’t replace it, just expands. One thing I learned: good people are always better than being alone.”

Caitlin shrugs. “Mine wasn’t so hot.” She thinks about Barry and karaoke, Cisco and trivia night, Iris and coffee. Ronnie and the way he cried when he proposed, how Jax laughed when she iced Ray’s feet out from under him when he tried to take the last jelly donut. Her mother covering for her when it came right down to it. “Pretty good now.”

“You ready to head back?”

Caitlin balks. “I--not yet. I’m so different, I don’t know… Not yet.”

Sara nods. “No rush.” She gently takes the knife out of Caitlin’s hands and gives it a twirl. “Not bad for two rich girls with tragic pasts and superpowers, huh?”

She puts the polish and the stone away and pours them both two fingers of bourbon. They clink glasses and drink deep.

“Also,” Caitlin says, “I think I had a sex dream about a girl.”

“Hell fucking yeah you did,” Sara says, and gives her a high-five.

 

Caitlin knocks on Martin’s door. “Hello dear,” he says, rubbing his eyes. “The results won’t be ready for--”

“I’m not here about the simulations,” she interrupts, then winces. “Sorry. I, uh. I got you this.” She thrusts a picture frame at him.

He fumbles for his glasses. “Oh.” It’s the photo of her and Ronnie, from their wedding. Caitlin doesn’t think she ever smiled so brightly. The happiest twelve hours of her life. “Oh,” he says again, and his eyes are wet.

“It’s not much,” she says quickly, “I had Gideon make a copy of the one you gave me. I just--”

“Please,” he says, and waves her in his room. Just above the small desk there are a few framed pictures--his wife and daughters, one of all the Legends together, one where he’s rolling his eyes while Jax roars with laughter. And now, beside them, her and Ronnie.

“Strange wonderful roads,” she echoes, and he settles an arm around her shoulders.

++

Caitlin lingers in the doorway of the Captain’s office. “Why are you being nice to me?”

Sara looks up from where she’d been playing with a knife, her feet up on the desk. “Why shouldn’t I be? Didn’t we already have this conversation?”

Caitlin frowns. “You owe the Flash a favor or something?”

“Probably, if we laid everything out and counted tallies.” Sara stretches her legs out, cracking her ankles, before standing. “I try not to do that anymore.”

Caitlin sighs. “Because we’re supposed to just help people. For no money.” It comes out more disgruntled than infuriated, and it makes Sara smile. 

“C’mon,” she says, getting to her feet. “I think it’s about time you go back to Central City.”

 

Disgustingly, they’ve all lined up in the parking lot to meet her. Cisco and Wally are holding up a sign that looks to be written in glitter pen. “Gross,” Caitlin mutters, and refuses to smile. 

Sara is waiting for her on the ramp. “Anytime you need a break,” she says. “You’re welcome with the Legends.”

Caitlin is halfway down the ramp before she pauses, turns. “You never really said why you invited me onboard your ship.” Sara rolls her eyes and Caitlin grins. “Third time’s the charm?”

“Here’s the truth about the Legends,” Sara says quietly, almost lost under the noise of the engines. “We’re all a little lost and trying to better than we were. You seemed like you’d fit right in.” Sara’s eyes are flat for a second, then they go warm, her smile genuine. “Or maybe I’ve got a thing for cold puns.”

 

“You’re back,” Cisco cheers, and only hesitates for a second before offering her a fistbump. She touches their knuckles together, tentative. Returns his careful smile.

“You’re back,” Barry says, more quietly and more like a question than a statement. There’s a smudge of what might be glitter glue on his cheek. 

Caitlin looks at them all. Nothing comes from nothing. “I’m back,” she agrees.

++

Caitlin stands in the aisle of the neighborhood store, frowning at the shelves and ignoring the deer-eyed cashier shooting her terrified glances from behind the register. She touches the lime jellos, dragging a nail across the pricetags before she selects her items, balancing them in her hands as she makes her way to the checkout counter.

“Anything you want,” the cashier says earnestly, almost cowering against the back wall. “I don’t want any trouble. Free bags for villains.”

“I’m with the Flash now,” Caitlin reminds him.

“He wrecks shops all the time,” the cashier says mournfully, but rings her up. 

 

Cisco still hides his spare key above the doorframe. She thinks he shouldn’t for a second, but--. Most of the people who want to hurt them wouldn’t be paused by something so mundane as a deadbolt. She lets herself in, makes her way into his bedroom. She pauses in front of the pictures on his dresser: Cisco and Dante, not that long ago judging by Cisco’s genuine big smile, but even with so little time passed he looks achingly younger, without the stress and grief lines he has now etched into his face. And beside it, her and Cisco and Barry, arms linked and a little blurry because Iris had been tipsy when she snapped it, Barry’s arm blurred as he raises his beer up, Caitlin’s eyes flaring oddly in the dim lighting of the bar and the flash from the cellphone camera. It makes her ache, and she flips it facedown even though it doesn’t make her feel any better afterwards. The frame clacks against the wood of the dresser and Cisco stirs at the noise, sitting up and rubbing at his eyes. 

“Caitlin?” he asks, his voice sleep rough, her name dragged out when he yawns in the middle of it. “What’s wrong?”

Caitlin frowns at the picture, then makes herself turn and face him. The sheet pooled around his waist, the holes in the collar of his sleep shirt, so worn and faded she can’t make out the logo on it. “I brought you something.”

Cisco fumbles at the bedside table for his glasses and a hairtie. “It couldn’t wait for the morning? Is Barry okay?”

“It’s a gift,” Caitlin clarifies, jolted out of her musings of how it’s been years and years since she’s seen him with his glasses instead of his contacts or just squinting. “I… didn’t think about how late it was.”

He ties his hair back, messy and half-knotted, and starts to stand. Then he squeaks, and yanks the sheets back over his lap. “Give me a second for pants?”

Caitlin arches a pleased eyebrow. “Sure.” She doesn’t move.

He rolls his eyes. “Go put on some coffee, you know where everything is.”

She obliges, realizing with a quick glance at the clock on his nightstand just how very late at night and also early in the morning it is, and how accommodating he’s being, considering. She’s done this before, make coffee in his kitchen, one tablespoon more of the grounds than she would make for herself because it’s the way he likes it. It’s more comforting than she thought it would be, going through the motions, and she leaves her shoes in a messy pile against the wall to stand in his kitchen barefoot and watch the coffee percolate. 

Cisco shuffles out after just a few minutes, his eyes clearer and little drops of water on his sleeve where he wiped his face after he washed it. His sweats are too big on him, dipping low on his hips and cuffed around his ankles; there’s a Batman logo on the ass. He plops onto the couch and outstretches his hands. “Gimme.”

“It’s not ready yet.”

“Not that, you said you brought presents.” He wiggles his fingers at her. “Gimme.”

Caitlin picks up the plastic bag from the counter and hesitates, suddenly unsure. “Maybe,” she starts, but he pouts, over-exaggerated and melodramatic. She hands him the bag and steps back, hiding her hands behind her back to hide their nervous twisting.

“Unwrapped,” he starts to tease, but then he withdraws the items and stops. Three single strawberry jello cups, and it’s so quiet in the room she can hear the plastic warp when his grip tightens. His throat bobs as he swallows hard. 

“I--” she says, and has to stop to take an unsteady breath. “I’ve been thinking about how much I’ve changed. How much I’m still changing. But I hadn’t--I didn’t think about how much it would change for you.”

Cisco doesn’t look up from his lap, his hands, the jello. 

“I’m sorry,” she says, and it’s the first time she’s ever really apologized since she stopped being Caitlin Snow, mundane doctor, non-meta widow. 

Cisco’s knuckles are white, his face almost as pale. “You should go,” he says without looking up.

“Cisco--”

“Please go.” His voice cracks on the last word, and Caitlin steps back like he’s thrown a vibe at her. This isn’t what she wanted. 

She flees from the apartment, barefoot and sick to her stomach, and doesn’t stop moving until she’s at STAR Labs, wrapping herself in a blanket and crawling onto the cot in the containment cell she’d claimed as her own months ago. She curls into a ball and holds her palm flat. Creates ice on her skin, over and over, until she’s too tired to think about anything except crystallization and freezing points. Until her skin is cold enough to be numbed.

 

She’s careful to be up and gone before Cisco comes in the next day, her phone on and her comm in her pocket but otherwise she spends the day restlessly moving around the city, her hair tucked up under her hat except when she’s meandering along the streets on the rough edges of town, where people recognizing her is a helpful deterrent instead of a potential attempt at a citizen’s arrest.

Barry finds her sitting on the edge of a dock, one long abandoned; the wood is discolored and pitted with rot and it creaks with the wind. Her legs dangle over the edge and sometimes the breeze is more sewage than seabreeze, but the salt spray is sweet on her skin and bitter on her lips; the water ripples soothingly in the dark. “Did Cisco send you?”

“No,” Barry lies poorly. “Yes,” he admits immediately, without any further pressure. 

“If he has something to say to me he can do it himself.” Her voice comes out two toned and she takes a deep breath, pushing down the frost starting to form on her fingertips.

Barry sits next to her with a sigh and a creak of his suit. “I didn’t come here to pass messages.”

Caitlin blinks. “Trouble?”

Barry tugs his cowl off, revealing messy brown cowlicks and fading red marks from the hood. “To be with my friend.”

“Oh,” Caitlin says, and she’s too tired for something snarky. She lets him scootch a little closer and, before she can second-guess it, leans her head on his shoulder. 

She feels his arm settle around her shoulder, tucking her into his warm side. “It’s gonna be okay.”

“It’s really stupid of you to take your cowl off in public.”

Barry kisses her hair; she can feel him smile. “That’s our girl.”

++

He takes her home, later, and she indulges the next day, floating out of a deep sleep in the late afternoon to the sounds of someone humming along to reggaeton in her kitchen. 

“I made breakfast,” Cisco says, when she shuffles out of her bedroom. He looks at her directly, spatula in hand, and goes a little pink in his cheeks. “Um.”

Caitlin looks down at herself. “I was sleeping.”

“You used to wear a pajama set,” he mutters, then winces. 

Caitlin goes stiff. She remembers her old pajamas: silk for bad days, cotton for the summer, flannel for the winter. Matching sets, all of them. And now: boxer shorts that made it into her laundry aboard the Waverider, a tank top that has hitched up to expose her belly. She retreats back to her bedroom. “I’ll change.”

“No, don’t--” Cisco starts, but she shuts the door on his voice, walking over to the closet before sitting on her bed with a sigh.

Cisco knocks timidly at her door. “Caitlin?”

“Just a minute,” Caitlin calls, making herself get up and dig around for some sweats. She yanks the door open. “Decent enough for you?”

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t have said it.” He holds up a wooden spoon and wiggles it enticingly. “Just like abuela used to make?”

She gives him a last little glare before opening her mouth and accepting the food. “Oh my god.”

“Forgive me?”

Caitlin smiles, genuine if reluctant. “Maybe. Is there more of that?”

Cisco beams. “Mama, you can have the whole damn skillet.”

 

He waits until she’s fed to bursting and lying on her sofa while he does the dishes to breach the topic. “I want to talk about last night.”

Caitlin groans, pulling the blanket over her head. “Cisco…”

She hears the water stop running in the sink, his footsteps coming closer. And then the blanket being lifted away. “Caitlin…” he mimics back at her, and then sits beside her on the couch. “I’m sorry about last night.”

Caitlin stares at the ceiling and tries to will her eyes not to tear up. “I’m sorry I’m not her anymore.”

They sit in silence for a few seconds.

“Do you remember that party at Joe’s? Christmas?”

Caitlin’s brow furrows slightly. “I made it snow.”

“I told you I loved you.”

“Yes,” Caitlin says, the memory coming back in a snap. “I remember. You were drunk.”

“ _We_ were drunk,” Cisco corrects. “Don’t try and rewrite history, you had an entire bottle of Merlot by yourself.”

“It was Christmas,” Caitlin objects with a grumble. 

“I think that was the last time,” Cisco says quietly. “Before…”

And since, Caitlin thinks, but doesn’t say it. 

“Barry was wrapped up in Iris,” Cisco says, returning to the memory. “I was too tipsy to vibe. So we shared an uber.”

“It was still snowing,” Caitlin remembers. “And the driver took us through downtown.” She remembers the lights strung in the trees and wrapped around the telephone poles. “You insisted I be taken home first, even though you were closer.”

“There was a wreath on the door of the lobby to your building,” Cisco says softly. “And you kissed my cheek and wished me a Happy Hanukkah.” 

“You said you’d see me later, and that you loved me.”

“Yes,” Cisco agrees. “And that was the last time.”

“Right,” Caitlin says, after a beat. She tugs testingly at the blanket to see if she can pull it back over her face and Cisco holds firm, shooting her a chiding look.

“I love you,” Cisco says simply, and he’s looking a little teary himself. “I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to say it again.”

“Oh,” Caitlin says, and then wipes furiously at her eyes. “Okay. Good.”

“It doesn’t matter to me,” Cisco says, and his voice cracks a little but stays steady, determined. “How you’ve changed. Look how much we’ve all changed. So it doesn’t matter to me what color your hair is, or what your voice sounds like, or what pajamas you wear. You’re the other half of my heart, and I love you.”

He stretches his hand out and she takes it in hers, clutching tight. “I love you too,” she says, and they curl up together under the blanket and have a good cry.

++

She starts hanging out in his labspace again, sneaking his lollipops out of the bottom drawer while he pretends not to notice and acting as his sounding board when he needs it. She unwraps a fresh cherry dumdum and rolls it around her mouth with her tongue. “Tell me again what this actually is?”

“Heat ray,” he crows, flush with impending victory. “Originally designed to--well, you know.”

“Incapacitate me?”

“Not primarily,” he hedges. “I thought of it first when the temperature twins were rampaging around Central City, before they got bit by the hero bug.”

“So it’s a modification of Mick’s gun.”

“ _Mick_?”

Caitlin rolls her eyes. “Don’t get jealous.”

“I’m not jealous. Why would I be jealous? You're just on a first name, underwear sharing basis.”

Caitlin reaches over and pokes the crinkle between his eyebrows. “You know you’re my number one.”

“I better be,” Cisco grumbles. “And no, it’s an entirely different energy source. No open flames.” He pops a cell into the butt of the gun and checks the chamber. “Locked and loaded, baby.”

“Ready for a test?” Caitlin calls some frost to her skin, lets the white flare in her hair. 

Cisco frowns. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea. Let me run another round of tests--”

Caitlin crunches the candy between her teeth without blinking, layers the tabletop with ice. 

“Just stand over by the wall,” Cisco instructs, switching tracks quickly. “We’ll start on the lowest setting.”

Caitlin stands in the testing lane, takes a deep breath and lets it slide out of her lungs slowly, eyes closed. When she opens them her fingers flex; a wall of ice erupts from the ground up, shielding Cisco from her view. 

His voice is muffled, as if from far far away. “Ready?”

“Ready,” she calls, and watches the fuzzy shadow of Cisco beyond her ice raise the gun. It flares orange and makes the ground tremble when it hits her shield. Cisco keeps it on for a count of five. 

“Okay?”

Caitlin steps out from the ice and examines how deeply it cut in. “You need more juice.”

Cisco scoffs. “That was barely on stun.”

“It’s barely effective,” Caitlin points out, touching where it had melted away her ice. Hardly an inch gone. “I expect more from one of your toys.”

Cisco’s eyes narrow. “I don’t make toys, Dr. Snow. I make _babies_.” 

Caitlin nods. “I’m not sure that’s as intimidating as you’d like it to be.”

He turns a dial on the gun. “Ice up, KF, and call me Nelly. It’s about to get hot in here.”

 

In retrospect, they both should have known better.

++

Cisco is carrying her, which feels all kinds of wrong. “Disproportionate,” she slurs, her head lolling weakly. He takes a corner as fast as he’s able and her elbow knocks painfully into the wall. 

“No short jokes,” he grunts, trying to force his tone into levity and not quite managing it. “Stay awake though, okay?”

Caitlin’s dripping on the floor, but it’s too much to be sweat. “Am I melting?”

“No,” Cisco lies, like she can’t tell the difference. “Barry!”

“Cisco? Oh my god, Caitlin?”

There’s a gust of wind on Caitlin’s face, and she realizes her eyes have closed. She can feel the scratchy linen of one of the infirmary beds on her skin, and the brightness of the examination lights through her closed eyelids. “Caitlin,” Barry says. “Can you hear me? Open your eyes.”

She groans. “Too bright,” she mutters, and there’s some movement; the light goes down to a tolerable level. She cracks her eyes open. “Ow.”

Cisco is fiddling with equipment, just barely in view; Barry is leaned over her, peering. “What happened?”

“Cisco shot me,” she grumbles.

Cisco makes an offended noise. “You told me too!”

“Caitlin!” Iris arrives, going quickly to Cisco’s side. “A full scan?”

“Yes,” Cisco agrees. Together, he and Iris wheel the cart over and start the diagnostic process. 

“Actually,” Caitlin says, “I feel better.” She sits up, and smacks at Barry’s fluttering anxious hands trying to keep her lying flat. “I feel good.”

“She collapsed,” Cisco tells the others. “The ray went right through her shield.” He touches her sternum lightly and she hisses. “That’s not good, right?”

“Bruising would be expected,” Caitlin informs him. She has more to say, facts and symptoms and possible diagnoses, but they’re slipping out of her brain before she can speak them, unable to hold onto a concept long enough to articulate it. “I feel okay,” she manages, but it’s stuttering and slurred and makes everyone’s faces go pinched with worry. Actually, she feels good. Boneless and floaty and _warm_. 

She sighs, relaxing back into the bed and adjusting the pillow under her head with a little noise of contentment. Cisco is waving things at her and making faces as they beep. He’s currently trying to take her temperature with an eye dilation device, but she’s too untethered to correct him. She hums a few bars from the song stuck in her head and wiggles her toes, her heels fallen off. 

“--aitlin?” Iris is leaned over her, waving a hand in front of Caitlin’s face. “You okay?”

“I am _excellent_ ,” Caitlin informs her.

Cisco has finally found the right scanning device. “I think she’s just high. And dehydrated.”

“Fluids?” Iris suggests. “And maybe let her sleep it off.”

Cisco fumbles at her inner elbow, Caitlin swats him aside with a grumble and puts in her own IV line. “I’m fine. Great, even.”

Cisco pats her hand. “Have a good trip, kiddo.”

She sticks her tongue out at him.

 

“Ciscooooo,” she says, an indeterminable amount of time later.

Cisco looks up from his tablet. “Thirsty?”

She snickers.

Cisco rolls his eyes, but his smile is fond. “Another hour and we do the scan again, okay? And blood draw, too.”

“Boooo,” Caitlin sing-songs. Then she sighs, wiggles her toes. “You don’t have to stay, I know you’ve got stuff to do for Barry.”

“Barry always has stuff,” Cisco says, setting his tablet aside. “You’re my top priority.”

That makes her feel just as warm as the heat ray. She makes a low content noise, curling her toes. Cisco blushes again, shifts awkwardly in his chair. “You can go back to your lab, is what I meant. I’ll beep you if I need something.”

“Not for nothing,” Cisco says, and he’s smiling but it’s plastic and forced, “but the last time you were in here I thought you were dead. And the time before that, you were.”

“Oh.”

“Oh,” Cisco echoes, and the silence becomes loaded and awkward.

Caitlin fumbles in her pocket. “Here.” She finds a singular lollipop, blue raspberry.

Cisco takes it from her. “Thanks.”

Caitlin settles herself back on her pillows. “Read to me?”

“It’s boring,” he warns, but he fires up the ipad and leans back in his chair, the seat creaking. His voice is warm and familiar and the cadence is comforting, the rambling of his asides and the self-pleased smile at his own corny jokes. It lulls her to sleep, the rise and fall of it, the candy clacking against his teeth, his warm hand resting gently on her knee.

++

She knocks on Cisco’s door. “You, uh. Had a present for me, the other night?”

Cisco raises an eyebrow, yawning. “The other night like two months ago?”

She shrugs.

“Yeah, yeah. I know how you are. C’mon in.”

She settles onto the couch while he rummages through the front closet, muttering to himself and cursing as he goes up on his tiptoes to reach the top shelf. “I threw it up here after our… conversation.”

She winces. “Right. Did I ever apologize for that?”

Cisco is quiet for a few seconds. “No need.”

“Jay never… I’m sorry.”

He sits next to her, shoulder to shoulder. “No need,” he says again, softer. “You came back.”

She looks away. “I hurt you. Everyone, but.” She tries to wipe discreetly at her eyes, sniffling a little bit. “I hurt you.”

He touches her wrist, links their fingers. “Caitlin. You’re back, and you’re okay. A fight here, an argument there? Who cares? It’s the smallest price to pay.”

She touches his cheek with her palm. “You called me the other half of your heart.”

He smiles. “I did, yeah.”

“You’ve been waiting for me.”

He brushes his fingers under her eyes, cupping her face in his hands. “As long as you need.”

She shakes her head. “We’ve waited long enough,” she says, and kisses him. He sighs into it, one hand dropping to her waist as she shifts half into his lap. His lips are soft and his eyes stay closed the whole time. He shudders when she says she loves him. She’s never felt so warm.

Above them, indoors, it starts to snow.

**Author's Note:**

> I know it felt like a patchwork of nonsense but I hope you enjoyed it. 
> 
> let me know what you think here or on my arrowverse tumblr @ nahekalei


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